$30.00

If your project needs a user output that's more complex than LEDs but more portable than a computer screen, this graphic LCD module will suit your needs. The screen is 128 pixels wide and 64 pixels tall, and each pixel is 0.45 mm. The backlight brightness and pixel contrast can both be controlled from software. The LCD1100 connects to a port on a VINT Hub; see the "Comaptible Products" tab for a list of hubs.

Built-in Drawing and Text Functions

Our powerful API makes it easy to draw simple shapes on the LCD screen: Draw indivudual pixels, straight lines or rectangles; Write text to the screen, copy one region of the screen to another region, or even print an entire screen of pixels all at once. Use the text function to write text in one of three different fonts to the screen, or design your own font and load it into a frame buffer for continuous use.

Custom Frame Buffers

You have full access to three separate frame buffers for this screen. Each one can be thought of as a blank canvas where you keep images that can be quickly and easily copied to the screen. For example, the user-customized font mentioned earlier would be stored here, and the text function can copy these images to the screen, letter by letter. Or, you could build a sprite sheet to copy in small images to be used for animating objects on the screen. One of the frame buffers can be saved to the onboard flash memory, so that its data can be maintained even when the board is powered off or used with a different computer.

Custom Characters

Custom characters are images associated with given unicode characters. A custom character can be any arrangement of pixels within the space allotted for a single character. Single characters are made up of pixels arranged in a grid with a size defined by setFontSize().

As with regular bitmaps for the Graphic LCD display, you can create a character bitmap by defining a byte array of ones and zeroes. Ones are colored in, and zeroes are empty. If you put a line break after each row, it'll be easy to edit the bitmap.

Once stored, characters can be recalled into a text string by using the unicode value for the location (in this example, "\x6"). For example, in C#:

gLCD.WriteText(LCDFont.Dimensions_5x8,0,0,"I \x6 Phidgets!");

Custom characters on the LCD1100 are stored as images on the frame buffer for their font.
FONT_User1 is stored on frame buffer 1 and FONT_User2 is on frame buffer 2.

These characters occupy the same space as drawings on their framebuffer, and will be displayed onscreen if their framebuffer is flushed. They can also be overwritten by using drawing funcitons on their framebuffer, so it is recommended to only use a given framebuffer either for drawing or storing fonts, but not both.

We recommend using FONT_User2 (frame buffer 2) to store custom fonts, as it can be saved for later use.

In order to use the custom fonts, you must first define their size with setFontSize(). Once the font size is set, custom characters will be placed on the font's frame buffer at a location corresponding to the character number provided.

Characters for each font are stored in rows ordered left-to-right, top-to-bottom.
Rows are filled with as many characters as will completely fit across the width
of the screen. There are as many rows as will fit on the screen vertically.

On a screen 128 pixels wide by 64 pixels high, if your font is 10 pixels wide by 20 high, you will have 3 rows of 12 characters. This allows for a maximum of 36 characters of that size.

A demonstration of how many 10x20px characters can fit on the screen.

To quickly determine how many characters can be in your custom font, you can call
getMaxCharacters() in your code.

Custom character indexing starts with character 0x01 and can be any character between 0x01 and the maximum
number of characters that fit on screen.

To determine if an ascii character can be used in a given custom font, you can
look at its corresponding ascii value on an ascii table to determine if it is within the limit determined above.

What to do Next

General Phidget Programming - Read this general guide to the various aspects of programming with Phidgets. Learn how to log data into a spreadsheet, use Phidgets over the network, and much more.

Phidget22 API - The API is a universal library of all functions and definitions for programming with Phidgets. Just select your language and device and it'll give you a complete list of all properties, methods, events, and enumerations that are at your disposal.

VINT Hubs

This Phidget is a smart device that must be controlled by a VINT Hub. For more information about VINT, have a look at the VINT Primer. You can use a Phidget Cable to simply and easily connect the two devices. Here's a list of all of the different VINT Hubs currently available:

Phidget Cables

Use a Phidget cable to connect this device to the hub. You can solder multiple cables together in order to make even longer Phidget cables, but you should be aware of the effects of having long wires in your system.

VINT Hubs

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Phidgets Inc.

We believe in getting problems solved quickly and projects finished on time. That's why we specialize in making affordable, easy to use sensors and controllers that require minimal electronics knowledge.

Phidgets Inc.

We believe in getting problems solved quickly and projects finished on time. That's why we specialize in making affordable, easy to use sensors and controllers that require minimal electronics knowledge.